Author: acsversace news

What happened to Andrew Cunanan’s parents, Modesto and Mary Ann Cunanan?

Warning: This post contains slight spoilers for the final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

The story of Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who fatally shot fashion designer Gianni Versace in 1997, ends this week, in Wednesday night’s finale of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. But while it’s over for the characters in the Ryan Murphy’s FX series, the real people affected by Cunanan’s killing spree lived on far beyond the events that end Season 2—including Cunanan’s parents, Mary Ann and Modesto.

Both Mary Ann and Modesto Cunanan (Joanna Adler and Jon Jon Briones, respectively) play key roles in the ninth and final episode of Assassination of Gianni Versace, each affecting the final hours of their son (Darren Criss) in their own way. But what happened to the real people after the nightmare was all over?

Mary Ann Cunanan

After her son’s death, Cunanan’s mother Mary Ann lived out the rest of her life quietly, if oddly. When journalist Maureen Orth interviewed Cunanan’s mother for her 1999 book Vulgar Favors—the basis of the FX show—she reportedly told Orth that her son did not kill Versace and that his previous murder spree was a mafia setup. She lived alone in National City, California, when Orth visited her and had dedicated a nearby plot of land to grow a memorial garden for Andrew. Orth also described “a shrine to Andrew” in Mary Ann’s living room.

In an anonymous blog post published by the San Diego Reader in 2009, someone who claims to be the daughter of the Cunanan family’s next-door-neighbor wrote, “The last time I saw Mary Ann, she was covered up in an old coat and sunglasses with a scarf tied under her chin. It was a hearty spring day that didn’t require a coat, and she dipped a hankie and washed her hands in a fountain at the Mercado shopping plaza.”

Several online obituaries list Mary Ann’s death at the age of 73, on April 15, 2012. Besides Andrew, she had three other children with Modesto Cunanan: Elena, Christopher and Regina.

Modesto Cunanan

Cunanan’s father—whose real name was Modesto but went by “Pete” in America—returned to the U.S. from the Phillippines after his son committed suicide. (He had fled the country after being accused of fraud in the ‘80s.) In 1999, two years after his son’s death, he arrived in Los Angeles with a Filipino filmmaker, determined to make a documentary about his son’s serial murders—which, the elder Cunanan told the Los Angeles Times, he believed was an FBI conspiracy. “The American people are being misled,” Modesto said. “They swallowed everything hook, line and sinker because it came from the FBI.” In addition to maintaining his son’s innocence, he also denied that Andrew was homosexual, calling him “gay by association.”

Around the same time, Orth spoke to Modesto for Vulgar Favors. She described that meeting in a recent article for Vanity Fair. “Cunanan told me that Andrew was being set up by the mafia, and maybe I could go in on the movie treatment he was peddling about Andrew for half a million dollars,” Orth wrote. “’I know who should play him,’ Pete Cunanan said. ‘John F. Kennedy Jr.’” According to Orth, Cunanan had also “joined a survivalist cult and was seeking buried gold he claimed the Japanese had left behind in World War II.”

Not long after his son’s death, Modesto remarried to a Filipina woman. His current whereabouts—and whether he is still alive—are unknown.

You can read more about Cunanan’s parents in Newsweek’s Assassination of Gianni Versace fact vs. fiction breakdown.

What happened to Andrew Cunanan’s parents, Modesto and Mary Ann Cunanan?

The Assassination of Gianni Versace episode 4 recap: the drama returns to Andrew Cunanan’s first killings

BBC crime drama The Assassination of Gianni Versace took a particularly tragic turn in episode four, returning to the very beginning of murderer Andrew Cunanan’s killing spree.

After watching him murder his final three victims – Versace, Lee Miglin and cemetery worker William Reese – in cold blood in the previous three episodes, episode four sees Cunanan undergo an emotional journey as he builds towards the murder of his former lover David Madson.

It’s the first time we see Cunanan seemingly emotionally attached to anyone, and provides some insight into his motives and the downward spiral that leads to the murder of the fashion designer.

Who is Jeffrey Trail?

We get very little insight into the character of Cunanan’s first murder victim; presumably that is coming in the next episode, with the series retroactively exploring Cunanan’s murders.

But, for the record, Jeff Trail, a former naval officer, was a friend of the murderer’s from his days in San Diego. According to a New York Times report from July 1997, Cunanan told friends shortly before leaving for Minnesota that he was flying to Minnesota to “settle some business” with an old friend.

The report goes on to suggest that the two had been romantically linked, but this was denied by Trail’s family.

Cunanan’s motives are clearer than ever

For the first time in the series, the murders Cunanan commits appear to have a clear motive. The episode opens with Versace’s assassin pummelling his first victim – his friend Jeffrey Trail – to death with a hammer in front of David Madson, who is frozen in fear.

A brief conversation between Trail and Madson suggests that Cunanan, who was in love with Madson, had found out that they had been sleeping together, and that Cunanan had killed him out of jealousy – thinking that somehow he and Madson would be able to build a life together with Trail out of the way.

As the episode unfolds, however, Cunanan begins to realise that his ex is never going to love him back, and that Madson is likely to run away at the first opportunity. He appears to realise this as he sits watching real-life musician Aimee Mann perform a cover of the Cars’ 80s anthem ‘Drive’.

Elsewhere in the series, there had been suggestions that his killings were a result of his craving notoriety (the day after he kills Versace, he picks up a copy of every newspaper to read the reports), but the murders that kicked off his spree appear more emotionally motivated.

Why didn’t David Madson escape?

The episode is particularly excruciating because we know exactly where it’s going. David Madson fails to escape Cunanan despite several opportunities on their road trip.

It is worth noting that this is one of the areas where the writers have had to embellish the most, as very little is known about what transpired in those days in late April and early May in Minnesota after Andrew Cunanan arrived to visit Madson and Trail.

“We know there was this murder, and then we know they were in a car together, and we know that David begged for his life at the end,” American Crime Story executive producer Brad Simpson told Vanity Fair, “but we had to fill in what might have happened during that time.”

A report by Newsweek in July 1997 stated, “Madson’s role remains hard to figure out. He apparently made no effort to leave; neighbours saw the two men walking Madson’s dog the day after Trail’s murder.”

The drama itself suggests that he was motivated purely by fear.

The killer’s misdirection

The show’s writers have been detailing repeated errors by the police, many of which may have resulted from stereotyping and a lack of understanding of gay life. In episode four, Andrew Cunanan throws the police off his scent by placing sex toys and gay porn magazines out on Madson’s bed before they flee, leading the police to assume that some sort of sex act had gone wrong.

The police later tell Madson’s parents ominously, “I can tell you with certainty, there’s a great deal you don’t know about your son”.

This continues the drama’s exploration into gay politics of the era, following the allusions to the AIDS crisis, and the police’s aggressive questioning Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) about his sex life on the day of the murder.

Where are Donatella and Gianni Versace?

For the second episode in a row, two of the series’ most prominent figures, as played by Penelope Cruz and Edgar Ramirez respectively, are nowhere to be seen, as the show continues to delve deeper into the life of the fashion designer’s killer.

Have we seen the last of the show’s glamorous duo? As has become increasingly clear, the show isn’t really about Versace. Oscar-winning Cruz and beautiful Miami beach scenes have give way to something far more cold and brutal…

The Assassination of Gianni Versace episode 4 recap: the drama returns to Andrew Cunanan’s first killings

GAY TIMES APRIL 2018 • RICKY MARTIN

April 2018 Keiynan Cover

Ricky Martin has long established himself as a true gay icon. Recently catapulted back into living rooms with his portrayal of Gianni Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The Assasination of Gianni Versace, Ricky is again using his platform to diversify and broaden our understanding of love in the 21st century. Now happily married with two children, he lives a far less ‘vida loca’ than previously, but urges us not to forget the past and reminds us just how important it is for younger audiences to know the story of Gianni Versace.

“What killed Gianni Versace was homophobia. It’s not the way he died, it’s the way it was allowed to happen. Back in the 90s – and we have to be careful because history tends to repeat itself – Gianni Versace was killed by a man that was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. This man was living in Miami but because he was a gay man killing other gay men, everybody turned the other way. That’s what infuriates me.”

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What Donald Trump and Versace’s Killer Have in Common

“The answer for every question about him really, no matter what the question is, is ‘dominance,’ the need to dominate,” said Gwenda Blair—the author of the not-exactly-briefly named The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate—in a 2016 interview with Yahoo News about the tiny-handed presidential candidate and his big, presidential aspirations. “Everything is focused on that, that’s his whole MO, and it all goes back to his dad, and to getting out of the outer boroughs.” Harry Hurt III, another Trump biographer, agrees: “It all goes back to his father. Since he was a child, he’s been vying for his father’s attention and everything else in his disturbed existence is rooted in the crazy need to prove he can outdo his father.”

Hurt’s biography of Donald Trump has the title Lost Tycoon. It might as easily be called A Life In Dollars—something said by Andrew Cunanan’s stockbroker father, Modesto, in an interview at Merrill Lynch in this week’s episode. The monologue that he delivers is so speechifying and dramatic that it sounds less anecdotal than like propaganda. “I have lived a life in dollars,” he assures them. “I was born in the Philippines, in a house that any of you gentlemen could buy with the money in your wallets…. I bought my first home [in America for] $12,000. A few months later, I moved to an $80,000 home. Now is that biography, or business? Because I will tell your investors that’s what I plan to do with their money. I will cross oceans with it. I will take it to new lands. I’m talking about growth they can’t imagine.”

Like some presidents, it turns out that Modesto also happens to be something of a con man: one who flies the stars-and-stripes flag in his yard, and calls America “the greatest country in the world.” (The name “Modesto” is another of those real-life ironies this story’s riddled with; it is the perhaps the opposite of nominative determinism.) Aiming to transform himself into a more American American, he tricks a very, very aged woman out of her life’s savings. “Yes, I stole,” he tells his son after he’s fingered by the FBI for selling phony stocks, and has to flee back to Manilla. “But only what I needed to be an American. You can’t go to America and start from nothing—that’s the lie.”

This lie is flexible. To start from nothing can be possible, assuming that you have the something of familial love as a foundation. When the mother of the young Gianni Versace notices his interest in her dressmaking in this week’s opening scene, we brace for conflict; happily, none is forthcoming. This is Reggio Calabria, Italy, in the 1950s—and although the boy is called a pervert by his teacher, and a pansy by a schoolmate, she remains as tender as the mother in a fairytale. Denied her childhood dream of growing up to be a doctor, she does not believe that parents should police their children’s aspirations in accordance with a thing as tedious, or nebulous, as classic heterosexual gender roles.

“I see you watch me work,” she tells him, softly. “There’s no need to hide.” “Success,” she adds, encouraging her son to make his first dress from a pattern scribbled down covertly in a language class, “only comes with hard work: many hours, many weeks, and many years. And it’s never easy. But that’s alright, that’s why it’s special.” Contrast this with the advice Modesto Cunanan gives to his son, whom he refers to as “Prince Andrew,” an odd affectation that feels somehow creepy rather than paternal: “Every morning when you wake up, and every night when you go to sleep, I want you to remember something: that you’re special. And when you’re special, success will follow.”

If the current president were not the current president, it would be easier to believe that Gianni’s mother was correct, and that Modesto was in error. Thinking that success is special only when you work for it seems more right, or more ethical, than thinking that some persons are de facto special and deserving of whatever they desire. But “more ethical” does not mean, necessarily, more true.

Now that we’re almost through with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, what appear to be the series’ themes? That there is no authentic shortcut to success; that genius cannot be approximated; that our early family lives sow seeds that will eventually grow into something inescapable, for good or bad: a thing that bears fruit, or a choking weed.

From early childhood, Hurt says in his Trump biography, Fred Trump would tell his son: “‘You are a killer…You are a king…You are a killer…You are a king…’ Donald believers he can’t be one without the other. As his father has pointed out over and over again, most people are weaklings. Only the strong survive. You have to be a killer if you want to be a king.” Following Modesto to Manila not long after graduating high school, Andew Cunanan expects to find an answer as to why his father gamed the system, sold the family’s assets, and then cut and ran. Instead, he finds the thing that he most fears: a coward, penniless and living like a ghost—no go-getter, no hero, but a deadbeat bum. “I can’t be you,” says Andrew. “If you’re a lie, then I’m a lie.”

“You’re not upset that I stole; you’re upset that I stopped,” Modesto snarls back. “Now you have to work. You’re a sissy kid, with a sissy mind.” He spits on Andrew, and the son—begotten by the father, but not yet his double—grabs a knife, but is incapable of striking with it. Both men watch each other with the tense uncertainty that only comes from two male animals not knowing who is predator, and who is prey. The moment is near Biblical in tone.

“Do it!” screams Modesto. “Be a man, for once!”

“I’ll never be like you,” Andrew Cunanan says, before he leaves. But you can’t go back as if your parents don’t exist, and start from nothing—that’s the lie.

What Donald Trump and Versace’s Killer Have in Common

Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace: the anatomy of a style icon

The character of Donatella Versace makes her entrance – and it is an entrance – near the end of the first episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Clad in her signature spray-on jeans, black roll-neck and double-breasted suit jacket, she is impossibly glamorous, even while grieving.

With Penelope Cruz playing Donatella in Ryan Murphy’s take on the Versace assassination, a follow-up to 2016’s The People v OJ Simpson, the show offers a potted retrospective of the iconic style of the Italian house, and the personal style of the woman at its helm. Cruz’s transformation into Donatella is uncanny – he has the original’s platinum-blonde hair, permanent tan, full lips and dark, smokey eyes – and a wardrobe of classic, covetable vintage Versace (or replica-Versace) pieces.

For a woman who once said, ‘You can be too boring, but you can never be too seductive’, seduction and glamour are in her DNA. Day-to-day looks remain true to the tried-and-tested formula reflected in Cruz’s opening appearance: tight black trousers – which Donatella declares to be ‘essential’ for every woman in her US Vogue 73 questions interview – black boots, a tailored jacket, or shirt, accessorised with an endlessly rotating collection of gold jewellery.

In September last year, two decades after Gianni Versace was murdered on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion,  Donatella, creative director of the Versace label since the designer’s death,turned her spring-summer 2018 show into a tribute to her late brother.

With five of the original supermodels returning to walk the runway in honour of the late designer, the show has already gone down in fashion history. At the centre of the five was the instantly recognisable figure of Ms Versace, dressed in her go-to daytime black with gold accents. Her own style has become as iconic as the gold chainmail sheaths worn by Cindy, Naomi, Carla, Claudia and Helena.

Though the Versace aesthetic has evolved, perhaps matured, during Donatella’s tenure, a flick back through 30+ years of her own looks demonstrate that, save a gradual exaggeration of her physical appearance – slimmer, more platinum, smokier eyes – her personal style has remained virtually unchanged. And, as Donatella, Cruz’s on-screen wardrobe is expertly judged. Daytime wear varies between minimal, streamlined silhouettes and sharply cut tailoring. For evening, she showcases a rotation of sheath dresses. The palette is minimal – mainly black, with a flash of red, metallic, and the occasional Versace print, always accessorised with her signature gold jewellery.

The first three episodes have shown a grieving, business-like Donatella, though future episodes will reveal flashbacks to high-glamour appearances – a particular highlight promises to be the Belt dress worn for Vogue’s 100th anniversary party. For the red carpet, she ups the ante in ultra-slim fit (she is a fan of Alaia’s bodycon designs alongside her own label), corset-cinched waist, sculpted bust, floor-length silhouettes. Sequins/beads/feathers/rhinestones deliver maximum glamour. The Donatella version of her brother’s all-out glamour that plays out on the runway and in the Versace collections, is somehow more feminine – a modern evolution on the 1980s campaigns where supermodels draped themselves over mahogany muscle men. The same can be said of her own style.

In December, Donatella was awarded the Fashion Icon award at the Fashion Awards. She accepted her prize in a gown that seemed to fuse her own style with the aesthetic of the label she has led for the last 20 years. Nipped at the waist, sculpting and cinching of the torso and bust, sleeveless, floor-length, slashed to the thigh, the silhouette was pure Donatella. The all-over print – an instantly-recognisable motif from the Versace archive – perhaps, a tribute to her late brother?

Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace: the anatomy of a style icon